BAZAAR

HOT LISTBazaarWhat are the challenges of telling a story from thepoint of view of protagonists over a large span of time?As the characters become more and more real to me, thelanguage for each comes quite naturally. There are manyvoices—because one of the protagonists speaks as both a boyand as a man. There are also translations from a Bengali novel,as well as letters from Bali written by Gayatri. Especially forthese letters, since they have a completely different, intimatetone and time period, I had to immerse myself in her. I readmemoirs, letters, and fiction from that time; I went for lots oflong walks to have conversations with her in my head.The book refers to how worlds collide even whenseemingly apart. How did these connections develop?The magical thing was how the interconnections becameapparent to me during the research. I started out with just aboy; then, as I stood in amuseum in Bali before thepaintings of Walter Spies,I discovered he died on January19, the very day my beloved doghad died, only a few monthsearlier. I know this soundswhimsical, but instantly it felt asif my life, the novel, and onereal-life character were allconnected. Slowly these ripplesof connectedness spread wider,and it became even clearer thatthis world we think of as past isclose to ours, and very presenteven in mundane ways: Travel,hopes and dreams, health, thediscovery of new countries,unlikely friendships. Wherethere is a striving for happinessin hostile surroundings, andwhere overwhelming forces ofhistory sweep everything aside.Much of the book isrecollection—what made you tellthis story through flashback?I was writing a tragedy, and in narrating it thisway I simply followed one of the basic techniques ofGreek tragedy, which is to tell you at the start whatcataclysmic thing had happened, and unravel theprocess that led up to it. It was a challengeto myself: Was it possible to sacrificesuspense,which is one of the main props offiction? I was going to replace the ‘What’snext?’ question with the subtler ones,‘How did it happen? Why? Whatdid it mean?’ ■``````NINE-YEAR-OLDMYSHKIN returns homefrom school one afternoon to discoverthat his free-spirited mother, Gayatri, hasleft their family with a German artist, WalterSpies. She fights for her personal freedom,as India’s revolutionaries gain momentum and Naziscome into power in Germany. We meet Myshkin 60years later, in 1992, and through his memories of hismother—and the letters she sent while she was away—weexplore ideas of liberty, of patriotism, of cosmopolitanism.All the Lives we Never Lived (Hachette), from award-winningauthor Anuradha Roy, is a sweeping, immersive journeythrough time, from the 1930s to 1990s, and place, from Indiato Bali. Here, Roy, whose last novel Sleeping on Jupiter (2015)was on the Man Booker Prize longlist, talks toBazaar about art during crises and thecommonality of wildly different worlds.What made you want to addressfreedom from differentperspectives? And given that thenovel is set decades ago, what isthe role of questioning andunderstand freedom today?Many of the characters are fightingfor freedom of different kinds.Gayatri defies the accepted modesof defiance; what she is fighting foris not personal freedom to paint orpicnic (as her husband thinks); sheis struggling for the idea that youcannot be caged into giving yourlife to a version of freedom thatbelongs to someone else, howeverworthy that may be. This is anurgent and live question eventoday: Certain dominant modes ofthinking are being forced upon us;our own choices are run down astrivial or unworthy or unpatriotic.The story alludes to opposingideologies of Rabindranath Tagore and MahatmaGandhi—what was your goal behind that?During the non-cooperation movement in India, Gandhiadvocated suspending artistic activity and cutting off all contactwith the West until the battle for freedom had been won. Thiswas opposed by Tagore, who saw humanity as one, nationalismas a narrow ideology, and art as the sacred duty of the artist. Whatshould be your response, as a writer or artist, when your countryis in a crisis? Should we turn into activists and cut ourselves off?Or is our role one of translating our political concerns into ourown creative sphere? These ideas are central to the book.FREEDOMWRITERAnuradha Roy, one of India’sgreatest contemporary authors, talksto Bazaar about her new novel``````BOOK``````IMAGE COURTESY RUKUN ADVANI